The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #159785   Message #3787008
Posted By: keberoxu
24-Apr-16 - 07:16 PM
Thread Name: Irish singer Fionnuala MacLochlainn
Subject: Fionnuala MacLochlainn: Irish singer
The Gael-Linn recording label has published a CD anthology in the last five or so years, documenting eight Irish singers who made recordings for the label, all of them women. The name of the album is Amhráin Ghrá.
Fionnuala MacLochlainn recorded, in the 1960's, enough songs to be released on an Extended-Play/EP record. From that product, three songs were chosen for release on Amhráin Ghrá. They are:

Spailpin a run
Éamonn a chnoic
Ó bhean a' tí

This is my first acquaintance with this singer. She is accompanied by a guitarist named Norman Watson. By the evidence of these three tracks, Mrs. MacLochlainn is indeed a traditional singer and one worthy of attention here at the Mudcat Café.

If I am mistaken, I hope someone will correct me; but I believe that this singer was the wife of Alf MacLochlainn, formerly of the National Library of Ireland, and author of the words to "My Son in Americay/Amerikay;" and their son is Colm MacLochlainn who is known to traditional Irish musicians although I do not know of him being on any recordings himself.
Fionnuala MacLochlainn had a voice on the low side, gentle and plaintive. Her Gaelic diction is that of a storyteller, unforced and precise; it must be easy for a native speaker to understand her singing. And for this alone, her voice is in marked contrast to many of the other seven voices on "Amhráin Ghrá." Most of the other artists on the album were involved in some way with the Gael Linn Cabaret, and sound that way, with their singing technique out of classical music and their highly theatrical diction. Mrs. MacLochlainn was no cabaret singer, you can hear that in seconds.

Here on existing Mudcat threads, Fionnuala MacLochlainn is remarked upon for her singing of "Little Jimmy Murphy," which she also sang for that recorded anthology of tribute to the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem (forget the name of the anthology). She deserves to be known for more than that.

"Éamonn a chnoic" is the Gaelic version of "Ned of the Hill," and she sings it with a melody very similar to the one in the Digital Traditions database for the Samuel Lover translation, "dark is the hour."
"Ó bhean a' tí" has been recorded by Moya/Máire Brennan, with Clannad and possibly on her own; this recording predates Ms. Brennan's.
"Spailpin a run," I believe to have been a sean-nos song. With a guitarist in the recording studio, and accompaniment, the song loses a little freedom and has to be paced kind of squarely. But you can still enjoy phrasing and ornamentation in Fionnuala MacLochlainn's singing, the sort that sound most natural when passed from singer to singer; she sings like a living link to an immortal past. I am glad to have made her acquaintance.